A Return to the Dungeon

While I agree, that I don't want D&D based on the encounter, I don't want a return to the dungeon as the basis. I want it based on the adventure. There was an effort by a lot people, as seen in Dragon during the 80's and 90's, to move D&D beyond the dungeon- it was, imo, one of the best things to happen to the game.

One of the big things that occurred to me was that there's no inherent difference between a "dungeon" and an "adventure." As far as I'm concerned, the phrases are basically interchangable: a dungeon is just one specific type of adventure.

Because adventures are designed the same way. Branching paths. Barriers to progress (traps, doors). Encounters along the way. Dead ends, red herrings, and a resource being consumed as the party solves it.

It's mostly fluff that makes one different than the other. In a dungeon, I need to choose the right door. In, say, a mystery-based adventure, I need to talk to the right witness. Essentially, this is the same gameplay challenge for the player: pick the right option.
 

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Dynamic!!!!

I think that Lanefan raised several good points about "what if they leave and come back" etc.


To which I suggest both the dungeon/adventure be dynamic as well as PC recharges.


They want to leave? O.K.

They want a 15 min adventuring day? O.K.


BUT THE DUNGEON MECHANICS RESPOND.


So a well build dungeon/adventure has built in "recharges" as well. These could include:

Under the heading of "the dungeon resets"
-Goblin recruits showing up/zombies being made from the bodies of the dea.
-Traps being reset
-Diplomacy checks becoming harder or needing to be rerolled. ("Ya said ya'd take on my job of ridding us of undead...that was three weeks ago...what ya been doin?!")
-beings get summoned

Under the heading of "dynamic reprecussions"
-assassins/trackers are sent after the pcs.
-the pc's names are smeared requiring diplomacy checks
-an alternate group beats the dungeon, removing the reward as potential from pcs


I think, for all gaming, and especially for dungeons, that STATIC is NOT the way to go.


So, if we use the idea of "gm gets certain allocated resources to develop a dungeon" among these should be recharge resources as I've mentioned...but also keeping in mind that these must fit the rule of STUFF BESIDES COMBAT.


Edit: So the question then becomes: when do the players recharge and when do the dungeons recharge?

My opinion is for players to recharge after a certian amount of time and/or after acheiving obstacles...with full recharges being ALL obstacles or a long rest outside of a dungeon. Whereas, the dungeon could recharge at a certain rate based on time...but that rate would be different depending on how many obstacles had been overcome.

e.g for dungeon recharge...players have done 90% of obstacles then leave the dungeon. Day one it recharges 10%...so is at 80%. Day 2 it recharges 20%...so is at 60. Etc...but maybe not SO exponential. Here the idea is that the more the players push on, the less resources the dungeon has to self replenish. The less of a dent they make before resting, the easier it is for the dungeon to replenish.
 
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You could describe the "restocking" abilities of the dungeon by adding specific things that have "restocking" abilities. A template added to other features.

Portal: These can bring in creatures from the other side.
Necromancer: These NPCs can raise the dead.
Allies: These NPCs can call on other allies.
Tainted: These areas taint natural creatures in their vicinity, turning them into monsters.
Trapsmith: These NPCs can build and reset traps.

etc.

The restock cycle should be tied to the PC's resources - if you're using 4E's 1-day-and-up, you'd want to go with 1 day.

I'd make the restock a random roll or maybe a level-based roll (the dungeon's level vs. the creatures it's trying to restock with).

If PCs shut down one of the features - drain the tainted pool, shut down the portal, kill the necromancer - the dungeon loses access to that ability. I think that would add a nice strategic element to play.
 

You could describe the "restocking" abilities of the dungeon by adding specific things that have "restocking" abilities. A template added to other features.

Portal: These can bring in creatures from the other side.
Necromancer: These NPCs can raise the dead.
Allies: These NPCs can call on other allies.
Tainted: These areas taint natural creatures in their vicinity, turning them into monsters.
Trapsmith: These NPCs can build and reset traps.

etc.

The restock cycle should be tied to the PC's resources - if you're using 4E's 1-day-and-up, you'd want to go with 1 day.

I'd make the restock a random roll or maybe a level-based roll (the dungeon's level vs. the creatures it's trying to restock with).

If PCs shut down one of the features - drain the tainted pool, shut down the portal, kill the necromancer - the dungeon loses access to that ability. I think that would add a nice strategic element to play.
Many adventures (all editions) already sort-of do this, though in nowhere near so hardwired a way.

That dungeons/adventures can in some ways restock themselves is not really in question. What we're trying to determine is how often (if at all) the characters trying to deal with said dungeons/adventures can refresh themselves - rest, regain spells/abilities/etc., even recruit new members/hirelings/henches/etc.

I think the answer essentially boils down to how much you and-or your players feel like worrying about resource management (RM) in an adventure, or how important RM is to you in general. To me, realism dictates at least some sort of nod to RM; and while this may lead straight to the 15-minute day I have no problem with this, in that I can always find ways and means to make their day longer. :)

Others' mileage may vary.

Lan-"is dungeon mileage measured in units of characters per adventure?"-efan
 

Many adventures (all editions) already sort-of do this, though in nowhere near so hardwired a way.

Knowing the capabilities of NPCs means that a DM can remain impartial.

That dungeons/adventures can in some ways restock themselves is not really in question. What we're trying to determine is how often (if at all) the characters trying to deal with said dungeons/adventures can refresh themselves - rest, regain spells/abilities/etc., even recruit new members/hirelings/henches/etc.

The two things go hand-in-hand. Refreshing resources should be a meaningful choice; providing reasons not to rest gives that choice meaning. Guidelines or rules give that choice structure and impart information to the players.
 

That dungeons/adventures can in some ways restock themselves is not really in question. What we're trying to determine is how often (if at all) the characters trying to deal with said dungeons/adventures can refresh themselves - rest, regain spells/abilities/etc., even recruit new members/hirelings/henches/etc.

The easy response is, I think "one happens when the other one does."

If players can regain all of their powers in a night, the dungeon can completely refresh itself in a night. If the players go back to Square 1, their enemies do, too. If the players take a week or whatever, so does the dungeon.

It's a "do-over." A reload. A reset to the save point.

I think the response I find more satisfying is, if the characters refresh themselves to full, they've failed. They've retreated, they've gone back to town, they gave up, they couldn't hack it.

Now, they might "get healed," that is, recover a portion of their power, without getting the whole thing back, at a cost. I think the cost of "the dungeon gets back some of its power too" is a really solid way to add a cost.

They probably shouldn't just be able to get a portion/all of their power back whenever they want to, or else there's no real risk of failure.

I think the answer essentially boils down to how much you and-or your players feel like worrying about resource management (RM) in an adventure, or how important RM is to you in general. To me, realism dictates at least some sort of nod to RM; and while this may lead straight to the 15-minute day I have no problem with this, in that I can always find ways and means to make their day longer.

I don't think you need a lot of RM to make the decision to rest a decision with impact. No more than you need in combat, measuring HP and actions and whatnot. Especially with the "dungeon recharges when you do" model, you just need to account for the overall challenge the party needs to overcome. That can be as simple as "all future combats are at +1 level." Because XP is accounted for by the dungeon, this makes things harder, without rewarding the players.
 


Experience points are also a major problem here. If PCs primarily get xp by defeating encounters, then churning through encounters efficiently becomes a player goal. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not going to create a game in which the players focus on the adventure itself. Why should the PCs avoid an "unnecessary" fight if defeating monsters is their objective?

If you want the PCs to focus on the adventure, you need to set the xp awards to that effect. Instead of giving xp for defeating monsters, you can give xp for story rewards (or treasure, if that's what the PCs are after). If the PCs know that they get half a level for routing the goblin tribe instead of getting 1/80th of a level per goblin they kill, that totally changes the correct strategy for handling the adventure.

In a way, that's the genius of the old 1e xp model. Putting aside the strange logic of getting xp for finding gp, it aligned the player incentives with the character incentives -- both should prefer to avoid combat and get more loot! If you want a campaign about searching for loot, make loot the xp rewards. If you want a campaign about slaughtering monsters and defeating encounters, use the 3e/4e system. But if you want a campaign about achieving story goals (or more sandbox style achievements), then that's where the rewards needs to be.

To which I suggest both the dungeon/adventure be dynamic as well as PC recharges.

They want to leave? O.K.

BUT THE DUNGEON MECHANICS RESPOND.

This is also a crucial point. A game that focuses on the adventure (instead of the encounter) needs a well written adventure -- not just a series of well written encounters.

If you're dealing with a fixed location adventure like a dungeon, it needs to be a dynamic place in which abandoning it in mid-exploration has consequences. If the dungeon is too big to be explored in a single day, then there should be zones so the players can identify whether they have fully defeated a group and can retreat without suffering a counter-attack. There should also be some method by which the PCs can gain intelligence about the dungeon so they can make well-informed decisions about which entrance to attack from, which direction to go, etc...

-KS
 

KidSnide said:
Experience points are also a major problem here. If PCs primarily get xp by defeating encounters, then churning through encounters efficiently becomes a player goal. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not going to create a game in which the players focus on the adventure itself. Why should the PCs avoid an "unnecessary" fight if defeating monsters is their objective?

If you want the PCs to focus on the adventure, you need to set the xp awards to that effect. Instead of giving xp for defeating monsters, you can give xp for story rewards (or treasure, if that's what the PCs are after). If the PCs know that they get half a level for routing the goblin tribe instead of getting 1/80th of a level per goblin they kill, that totally changes the correct strategy for handling the adventure.

In a way, that's the genius of the old 1e xp model. Putting aside the strange logic of getting xp for finding gp, it aligned the player incentives with the character incentives -- both should prefer to avoid combat and get more loot! If you want a campaign about searching for loot, make loot the xp rewards. If you want a campaign about slaughtering monsters and defeating encounters, use the 3e/4e system. But if you want a campaign about achieving story goals (or more sandbox style achievements), then that's where the rewards needs to be.

I think this is a big crux of it. In many ways, those who have abandoned rigorous XP systems and just level up "when they have accomplished something significant"/at DM whim are ahead of the game in this respect: they are rewarding advancement, not just monster-bashing.

Rather than "XP for encounters," there needs to be "XP for dungeons." Rather than 10 or 12 or 13 encounters to a level, there's 2 or 3 "dungeons"/adventures to a level. You can get the XP by beating up the monsters, but you can also get the XP by avoiding the monsters and doing other things.

In a way, this sets up an instant mechanism for doing two related things. Now, encounters can be more deadly, because the PC's are expected to have ways of avoiding them (stealth or diplomacy). More deadly encounters also provides an incentive to avoid them.

Not that all encounters should be crazy deadly, but this can help bring back the old kinds of "gotcha" monsters more as dungeon features than as encounters. You're not expected to fight the Rust Monster or the Rot Grub, you're expected to treat them like a pit of acid or a shaft into the darkness. You deal with them, not necessarily kill them.

This, in turn, leads less to "monster manuals" as we know them, because individual monsters are rather pointless, and to more full-fledged adventures, where the monsters and creatures are intrinsic to the challenge being faced. The Rust Monster is more like a trap or an NPC, less like a combat challenge, more of a challenge related to the dungeon itself.

Imagine that when you buy the Core Rulebooks, you buy a player's book, a DM's book, and a book full of adventures, rather than a book full of monsters. And this makes a database like the DDI exceptionally useful as well, since you can remove all the individual bits from the adventures and re-contextualize them more easily with an electronic program than you could with raw paper.

In many ways, I think this model helps me understand 1e and earlier editions better. I started with 2e, so I had XP for monsters from the get-go. 3e and 4e refined this, but maybe in doing so, they lost the dungeons aspect of the game, the adventures that make heroic fantasy so compelling. Which absolutely include big, epic combats, but aren't necessarily about combat.

I think if the game is going to be dragged back there, there are absolutely some lessons we want to keep, but I also think there's some exciting new ways of doing things that could be present there.
 

A few random thoughts:

a) re: classes. Blue Rose (precursor to True20) presented three character classes: Adept, Warrior, Expert. Adepts learned magic the easiest, Warriors had the most health and learned the most weapon skills, and Experts learned skills. With the correct feats, Warriors and Experts could learn spells, Adepts and Warriors could learn new skills, and Adepts and Experts could become skilled in better weapons. It seems like every class is an amalgam of one or more (or all) of these.

The 4e Bard's strength is its versatility; it can take on the jobs of most of the other classes. If a whole group of players made Bards, each player would likely gravitate towards skills, feats et al that would cater to his playing style and summarize his role as Leader, Defender or what have you. So why this couldn't be the standard, well... I don't know.

b) re: dungeon as adventure. At its core, a dungeon is simply a group of rooms filled with monsters and treasure. It could theoretically be one long tunnel with rooms for encounters and a boss at the end. Whether a PC goes "left" or "right" in a maze becomes largely irrelevant, as most players are smart enough to "follow the wall" until they find what they're looking for. A dungeon as an adventure is little different than a wilderness adventure (in a dungeon, your choices of direction are more limited, but the end result of getting from 'A' to 'boss' is still the same), save for the actual setting itself.

c) re: resource management. 4e has taken great pains to remove the tedium from most RM, so why mess with it?
 

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